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Pavel Sokov Portfolio-Looking to start freelancing by 2014

Hello! I graduated business school and started my career in marketing over a year ago. Although it is going fine, I am looking to start freelancing from home. First by starting slow after work, and then quitting after 50-60% of my marketing salary is accounted for by freelance activities done outside of work.The freelance work I wish to be doing is portraiture, book covers, and illustrations on cards and board games.

I am 22-23 now, and by the age of 24 (May 2,2014)I intend to be involved full time in the industry or at least be making a very significant supplementary income from art.

I got into EXPOSE 11 with 3 paintings of mine so far but failed to get into this year's Spectrum. My goal is to be featured in next year's, no matter what.

You have some great work man. You show a consistency of style and a good range of subjects, as well as a proficiency in your technique. Three of your pieces are inconsistent however in detail levels, or are not wholly convincing due to anatomical guesses. The low light male portrait shows great facial anatomy, but loses me in the smoothness of the orange lighting across his face. The Athena bust has great texture and modeling in her helm, but this texture doesn't follow fully through into her face, where the rendering also falls flat. The goblin gnome character is a nice expansion into fantasy, and has some really great details (the arms, hair/fur in particular) but doesn't convince me of his design due to anatomical distortion in his legs and face, as well as a stiffness in his stomach/torso.

With this in mind, I think you have great works and I don't think you have long before you can live off of freelance work. If there's any advice I could give to you to make that next push, I recommend exploring more fantasy themes and characters, and even concepting full characters before illustrating them. Even if you feel the designs aren't presentable, it will give you a good sense of the character before you decide to integrate them into an environment. This way you can simulate the art direction that comes with illustration work, as from what I understand illustrators focus on marketing and presentation, and not conceptual design.

Let me know if you disagree with any of this critique. Again, you're a great artist. Really love Putin and Louie CK.

You are great at copying things you have reference for but when you make things up they fall apart and don't have the same quality level which means you need to have reference for everything. So take the extra steps and get reference. If that means sculpting maquettes or getting models to pose for your ideas. To help things work from life more when you can paint from life as well as you copy then making things up won't be as difficult for you. Working from life means translating which is the bridge to invention.